


xix; I Never said I was Proud

by Theo_Thaur



Series: 31 Days of TUA Whump [19]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst, Gen, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Klaus Hargreeves’ Cult, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Season/Series 02, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:22:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27224191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theo_Thaur/pseuds/Theo_Thaur
Summary: Whumptober 2020 submission. "No 19. BROKEN HEARTS": Grief, Mourning Loved One, Survivor’s Guilt.-----Varanasi, India. After becoming sober, Klaus tries to cope with Dave's death in other, equally unhealthy ways.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz, Klaus Hargreeves/Original Male Character(s)
Series: 31 Days of TUA Whump [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951234
Kudos: 6
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	xix; I Never said I was Proud

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGERS: homelessness, mentioned drug addiction, drug use, hypersexuality, sexual behavior, sexual relationship between Klaus and his followers, grief.

_xix; I Never said I was Proud_

Klaus could remember when he'd lived on the streets, thinking that all he needed was money, that the whole thing about money not buying happiness was bullshit. He'd landed in the sixties --for the second time--, and been once again without a home, having spent a brief period of time living in the academy. It had started out much the same, he was still scrounging for food and Ben was still a prissy bitch telling him to get a job. Basically like his old life except his family was all possibly dead or gone forever, and there was a funky vintage filter slapped over everything. 

He'd stumbled, quite literally, into better circumstances. Klaus was still surprised Ben had put up with him and helped him trick the rich people into thinking he could float. Then again, maybe Ben had just wanted Klaus to steer clear of trying to resurrect dead husbands and friends of the nice rich people.

As it turned out, Klaus still wasn't happy. There were some good moments and always food around, so it was better, but happy? Not really. Destiny's Children followed him around everywhere and he didn't really do attachment. He was beginning to think that while money could buy food and nice clothes, it didn't buy happiness. Thinking that money didn't buy happiness, maybe that was some inspirational quote but money had been his beacon of hope during rough times, or in other moments the thing he so greatly despised because his lack of it had brought him where he was. Actually, nothing really mattered and nothing would solve the issues in his life --he had money and if money wouldn't solve it, nothing would. Ben could be a smarmy little bitch about it too. Since they'd practically shared the same life, Klaus had always made the excuse of needing a little cash to get on his feet, and now that he had it, he wasn't all that different. He'd curbed his drug addiction for the time being, which had been no easy task considering it was around him relatively frequently. He'd made a rule a while ago that he didn't want to see weed or LSD or  _ anything _ , which was very contradictory to the teaching of his vedas or any of the countless other things he'd written over the span of a sleepless week a couple years back. Drug use was frequent in the circles of people he attracted, which was fine, but having it around him personally was just difficult. It became the norm to see his followers hiding joints when he came into a room. They didn't question it and Klaus didn't tell them to stop permanently.

Ben had already asked him to try and spread the word about substance abuse, but honestly Klaus had stopped for Dave and Dave only. He would've gleefully been getting fucked up with all of them if it didn't make him feel so damn guilty. Klaus felt they were lucky they didn't have to deal with someone they loved dying in a war, because  _ definitely _ none of them would share his hardship. He let them do their thing, because who was he to tell people what to do with their bodies? They were already a lot of work without him ordering them around, Klaus had no interest in making things more difficult by being a control freak like his father had been.

There was one, kind of, sort of, exception there. A benefit other than money and having people that always ensured he was well-fed. Attention was one thing, Klaus at first had actually been very satisfied by having people telling him how great of a guy was --putting the fact that he was a fraud aside. He gotten used to being smart mouthed constantly by Ben, and then briefly by Five (a real throwback there, just like when they were kids). Diego had also constantly given him shit but Diego didn't count because Klaus actually had a lot of the tools to get back at Diego, when he didn't know how to do that with Five. Five had once been cocky and arrogant, and smart as all hell, but he was less emotional as an old man, if just crankier. Diego on the other hand, really hadn't changed too much since he was a seventeen year old polishing his knives in the corner of his room and trying to get a girlfriend (or boyfriend). 

But praise only went so far, Klaus couldn't hear it  _ all  _ the time. Really devalued it, if it was constant compliments. Being attention-starved with so many groupies was a difficult task, but Klaus made it work. Without drugs feeling like an option, and a group of people basically at his disposal, Klaus' mind did wander a bit. That was natural. He'd avoided dying in twenty nineteen and, in the end, hadn't done a  _ super  _ shitty lookout job at the theatre. If Klaus lived by anything, one of the big rules was definitely that near-death experiences should be rewarded with sex. It was a given. Almost overdosed? Sex. Finished a crazy dare? Sex. Preferably with whomever had dared him, for extra tension. That rule was somewhere up there with 'you can't get arrested for tax fraud if you just don't do your taxes', and 'always be nice to the bartenders.' 

So, that was all to say, he did sleep with his followers. A portion of the devotees at least. Now a powerful person treated like a god and having sex with his followers, while sounding very raunchy and possibly exciting as a fantasy,  _ definitely _ coded a bit Catholic Church, or… cult. But Klaus had never once personally used the word cult to describe Destiny's Children, and neither had he forced anyone to do anything. He was just one well-known person in a group of free-spirited individuals looking to escape southern values. 

And yes, it was contradictory to many of Klaus' feelings, that he slept around freely. His heart belonged to Dave, through and through. His body though, well it was more of an open invitation. In the Baja days, Klaus had believed that he could fuck his feelings out. It had seemed to him that if he fervently went at it, the idea of missing some random man he couldn't even  _ touch  _ would leave his brain, and he'd be free. He had believed that he wouldn't find the lovey-dovey situation he'd had with Dave to be ideal when he remembered that it was still possible to get milk without buying the cow. Klaus had thought he might decide he hadn't really loved Dave at all in a romantic way, but instead found that while he still missed Dave's absence and couldn't bring himself to throw out the dog tags, sex was the only calming activity left at his disposal. And while sure, maybe he could've taken up knitting again or made up more scripture just to be asked funny questions or praised for how deep it was, that wasn't Klaus' style. To put it more bluntly, he just couldn't keep his mind on any of that stuff long enough to make it stick. 

He wanted to be touched, and not in the invasive way of his followers, with their palms outstretched. He wanted to be  _ held _ , properly, to feel the tactile sensations, as many as possible. He just couldn't think about Dave, and that was where the real root of the problem laid. It wasn't truly the nature of romantic feelings that bothered Klaus, or even that they were unreturned, although both were such large things.

Thinking about Dave meant thinking about Vietnam. The two were inseparable, the place contained the very beginning of his life with Dave in it, and the end. 

He would never be happy if he allowed himself to think about Vietnam, that was something Klaus had accepted. He couldn't go back to that moment of helplessness when he'd screamed for a medic, because that helplessness would stick to him like tar every time, and follow him through his day, getting under this skin further and more quickly than Ben ever could. Sometimes, the helplessness would leave him only to be replaced with irritation at himself, for acting like a victim when it was his fault Dave had died. He hadn't done enough, he should've pulled Dave away from the fire, or tried to stop the bleeding. Maybe he could've taken Dave to a medic, or scrounged around for medical supplies and done it himself --anything that would reduce the amount of time he spent shocked, with Dave in his arms. The first professional to lay a hand on Dave had been a corpsman.

Was self-loathing better than helplessness? Klaus had asked himself that before and he didn't need to hear it from Ben directly to know what the unsolicited advice would be.  _ "Dave wouldn't have wanted you to feel either. He'd want you to move on."  _ Yeah, well, Dave also probably wouldn't have wanted him feeling up every pretty face that was interested, and there they were. People didn't always get what they wanted, clearly, since Dave was dead. Or would be dead. 

Sexual touch was  _ so  _ much easier than hand-holding, or cuddling meant to comfort him. He went fast because that's what he was looking for, a constant bombardment of sensation to keep him right in the present time, nowhere else. Better to perform a little and do well than be left alone with his thoughts. Time and quiet was dangerous, even if it was something he craved in strict opposition to the worshipping behaviors of Destiny's Children. 

Klaus had invited a measly count of  _ one _ person into his room that day, though he would have no problem if others joined --except for Keechie, because nobody wanted full-on sobbing during fairly vanilla sex. He didn't know the follower's name, Rick or Ron or something. Could've been a John, too. It wasn't super important he knew. Flute and sitar melded together from a window opened out towards the fields, the skies were sunny and the monsoon season had finished in Varanasi. He'd spent one summer there and it had been difficult, the weather reminded him too much of Vietnam, and it still did, in some respects. But he'd had the money of his sponsors to air condition the house, which was enough of a fix on the problem of the heat that had threatened to give him flashbacks. Klaus was feeling electric, light on his feet as he danced around with the follower. The excess fabric of their clothes flowed like curtains in breeze. Clean whites, burgundy, and saffron; brocade and psychedelic paisley mixed freely as Klaus locked his mouth against the other man's. He wouldn't have been able to pick apart this partner from a line-up, it was all generic and that was fine with Klaus, he wasn't interested in who the man was, just the way lips felt against his as they swayed and grinded against each other to the music. It was lively and real and made him feel good, almost as if nothing could truly hurt him. Wordlessly, Klaus ushered his follower to the bed, climbing atop the sheets and feeling a grin on his face as the devotee did the same. He wasn't looking to be the calm guru, not when he already had to pretend so often. The others could choose to see it as enlightenment, as unification in its rawest and truest form, but for Klaus it would only ever be an escape. 

\------*´｡*ﾟ

He did what he'd set out to accomplish. Klaus had kicked the man out respectfully in the aftermath. Ben had blinked out into the ether about as soon as Klaus started flirting. Ben loved to criticize his habits but it was becoming obvious to both of them that nothing Ben said would really persuade Klaus. So Ben started leaving earlier and earlier during encounters like that because he knew what it would turn out like, sometimes with very little earning and a fast-paced escalation. He drew the sheets around himself, only half-clothed. Klaus wished his mind was foggier than he discovered it to be. Physically, he was about as relaxed as he ever was. He wouldn't go through it so frequently if there wasn't an addictive sense of release promised at the end --it did work as promised. 

But he wasn't without shame and remorse. 

Klaus knew it would be there once he'd finished, because it always was. That wasn't enough to keep him from doing it anyways, focusing on the short-term benefit. It fit better with his grief to not think about the long term. He'd never been a planner, but especially following the loss, what did it matter? Plans changed, he'd make them in the moment whether he thought about it beforehand or after. Never would he be able to focus enough on the future to decide anything important, he didn't bother. Klaus laid in bed, finding himself tired and weak, and he knew it was owed to more than just orgasm. He'd tried to stop it before, his predilection for sexual encounters. One too many times of Ben telling him he was  _ "acting like a sixteen year old" _ that couldn't keep his hands out of his pants. Destiny's Children would be outside of his door, possibly waiting there but definitely not far. Klaus didn't want to see them, their validation meant nothing and if anything it was frustrating.

He fumbled through an optimistically tangerine nightstand, past a mess of beat writers he was halfway plagiarising for speeches, magazines featuring scantily-clad women, and mala garland. Klaus' fingertips brushed against the cool chain, and he had to dig a little to pick it up. He smiled sadly, shifting back to lie on the mattress. Klaus' hands shook as he ran his thumb over the embossed metal, over the name. There was still that slight lip on the rounded edge, the ball chain was still ribbed and cheap like the kind of necklace you bought at an arcade. His face burnt not from the flush of sex, but from a deep shame. Klaus did what he always did. He asked Dave for forgiveness and told himself he would stop, but he was afraid of being alone and had enough guilt even if he abstained from sex. 

Klaus closed his eyes when his vision blurred with tears, holding the tags to his chest. He wished his touch wasn't the only thing keeping the tags warm, he wished his head didn't hurt. Klaus didn't want Destiny's Children, nor the money and attention of rich women that saw him as a prophet.

He just wanted Dave to hold him.


End file.
